Volkswagen Group Brings Products to Market Faster in China – Development Time Reduced by Around 30 Percent

It’s an important step of our “in China, for China” strategy: Today at Auto Shanghai, we announced the formation of a new development, innovation, and procurement centre for fully connected, electric cars, with headquarters in Hefei. This will systematically expand our development expertise – at China speed.

The new company, with the project name ‘100%TechCo’, will receive investment worth EUR 1 billion and is expected to launch in 2024. It brings together teams from vehicle and component R&D as well as purchasing, in one joint unit. This will allow us to gear vehicle development even more quickly to the wishes of Chinese customers and achieve a shorter time to market.

Through the involvement of purchasing, 100%TechCo will integrate state-of-the-art local technologies and application concepts from high-tech Chinese companies at an early stage of product development. It will also leverage synergies to gradually reduce development times for new products and technologies by around 30 percent.

Our China CEO Ralf Brandstätter said: ” The establishment of 100%TechCo is an important step of our ‘in China, for China’ strategy. By consistently bundling development and procurement capacities as well as integrating local suppliers at an early stage, we will significantly accelerate our development pace. This will also strengthen the efficiency of cooperation for our joint venture and increase our profitability.”

The new unit will comprise more than 2,000 employees from R&D and purchasing and the CEO will be Marcus Hafkemeyer, our Chief Technology Officer. The new company will more closely integrate the development projects of all of the Volkswagen Group joint ventures in China – SAIC Volkswagen, FAW-VW and Volkswagen Anhui.

“With 100%TechCo, we are opening a new chapter in cooperation with our joint venture partners in Changchun, Shanghai, and Hefei, as well as the Group’s brands,” said Mr Hafkemeyer, CEO of 100%TechCo. “We are fostering seamless collaboration to bring customized products to the Chinese market even faster and more efficiently.”

As a first step, 100%TechCo will manage the development of the MEB platform-based models of the Volkswagen Anhui joint venture and be responsible for the development of China-specific platform requirements and modules with a focus on electric mobility. The company is already expected to play a major role in the development of a future Volkswagen brand model to be launched in 2024.